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Honeysuckle

Although it was splendid weather for a walk I decided to spend the day wiping my nose after yesterday's excesses and doing a bit of essential shopping before the spadgers start petitioning Oxfam. The young great tits are pretty much permanently camped on the bird feeders by the rowan tree and the goldfinches have rediscovered the nyger feeder so I'm under pressure to keep the catering facilities up to snuff. The cat is much put out by the young spadgers sitting on the window sill pulling their tongues out at her through the window. I'm continually spooked by the collared dove singing loudly down the chimney. So it's all going swimmingly really.

I had one of those strange trains of thought, set off by somebody's asserting that all the animals would live together peacefully were it not for human beings setting a bad example. This is, of course, nonsense: if an animal can eat something it will do. So gulls eat chips, wrens eat tadpoles and magpies eat whatever they please. Then I got thinking: there are reports of great tits eating mice. And one of the reasons why the breeding success rates of albatrosses is falling is that mice eat them at the nest. So if great tits eat mice and mice eat albatrosses, which would eat what if a great tit was matched with an albatross?

Anyway, some numbers;

• Blackbird 1
• Blackcap 1
• Collared Dove 2
• Feral Pigeon 1
• Garden Warbler 1
• Goldfinch 2
• Great Tit 2
• House Sparrow 19
• Jackdaw 1
• Magpie 2
• Rook 2
• Swift 1
• Woodpigeon 2
• Wren 1